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Analog Cellular Shutdown To Hit Built-In Devices
Nick Kilkenny sends us an AP article on the imminent shutdown of the US analog cellular network, now 24 years old. The network is scheduled to go dark on Feb. 18, 2008; some users, such as OnStar, are stopping analog service at the end of this year. Here's a list of devices and industries that will be affected by the shutdown. (Cellular telephony won't be affected much.) "The shutdown date has been known years in advance, but some industries appear to have a had a problem updating their technologies and informing their customers in advance... General Motors Corp., which owns OnStar, started modifying its cars after the 2002 decision by the Federal Communications Commission to let the network die, but some cars made as late as 2005 can't use digital networks for OnStar, nor can they be upgraded. For some cars made in the intervening years, GM provides digital upgrades for $15." Update: 12/22 22:25 GMT by KD : Replaced two registration-required links.
It's an iCar
Brilliant user interface, hailed as the best car ever. Inexplicably it has only one door, no reverse gear and the hood is welded shut.
Want to improve your Karma? Instead of "Post Anonymously", try the "Post Humously" option.
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> I work at GM/OnStar
Most of your points are all well and good -- I'm not in OnStar's target market, but you addressed the tinfoilers pretty nicely. But... dude... seriously. There are some ideas that didn't need to be thought up. And that was one of them. And you just thought it. Worse, you posted it publicly to a website. Now, please, please, please swear to all of us that you'll never utter that phrase, even in jest, among your co-workers. Banner ads on an automotive heads-up display is an idea so infuriatingly intrusive, dumb, and annoying that you have a moral obligation to prevent the guys in marketing from ever hearing of it, because you know goddamn well what'll happen if they do.